Guest workers' remittances and output fluctuations in host and home countries: the case of remittances from Turkish workers in Germany

Abstract

Over the past decades, different Mediterranean countries have sent considerable numbers of workers to the EU area, generating sizable amounts of foreign exchange receipts through the remittances these guest workers have transferred hack home. In some instances, however, the share of remittances in foreign exchange receipts has risen so high as to cause concern for policymakers, as they imply potentially serious effects on macroeconomic balances following sudden drops or jumps in remittances. Despite the importance of implications of the volatility of remittance receipts, the current literature severely lacks thorough investigations into the sources of this volatility. This paper aims to help fill this gap in the literature by documenting some key business cycle properties of workers' remittances received by the Turkish economy. More specifically, the paper investigates whether there is a relationship between the amount of remittances sent to Turkey by the large number of Turkish workers living and working in Germany, and up- and downswings that Turkish and German economies experience. For this purpose, regularities between fluctuations in the national outputs of respective economies and remittance flows to Turkey are analyzed by using time series data, and implications of results for the Turkish economy are discussed.